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Cars

Online tire firm pumps up profits

Sofia Volpov's idea to wheel and deal on the web treads new ground

For Sofia Volpov and 1010tires.com, what started off in a room above a tire store has now expanded to a warehouse of its own, employees and an IT department.

Photograph by: Nick Procaylo, PNG
, The Province

This is the 15th in a series profiling women who have risen through the ranks of the automotive industry in Metro Vancouver and beyond.

In 1979, Sofia Volpov moved to Canada as a refugee from the former Soviet Union.

When she arrived, "We had no money, we didn't speak one word of English and I had a baby on my arm." She immigrated with her husband and her son of less than two years old.

While the hardships of her former life were behind her, many new challenges loomed on her horizon.

"I had to go to school to learn English and how to drive and find a job in my field which was accounting/bookkeeping," she says.

Her husband, by trade, was an auto mechanic and he stumbled upon some tires he decided to sell via a newspaper ad. After a positive experience with the sale, the couple decided it would be a good industry to be a part of and so started to build a tire business.

"Because I was in bookkeeping, I always did his accounting and books," Volpov explains. "And as the company grew and he hired people, I did the payroll, banking, and eventually moved into public relations, customer relations, marketing and I did all our advertising."

Needless to say, Volpov was pretty busy with the business, which kept growing, as did their family. By the 1990s, she had two children and the family owned three tire stores.

Her aspirations of growing the business even further had her thinking.

"In 1999, during the height of the Internet era, I met with one friend who was in IT and asked him if it was possible to sell tires online. And he said: 'Why not?' I said, okay, what does it take?" In early 2000, they started developing the 1010tires.com website. By August of that year, it was complete. But the orders didn't start rolling in right away.

"It took us probably two to three months before we saw our first sale," Volpov, 57, says. "The first sale happened sometime in October and I was so excited because I was the only one who was manning this whole thing.

"So I took the phone call, and the guy decided to place an order with me. I got really excited and put everything on a piece of paper because I didn't have any infrastructure to do it online ... At that time I took the paper and (accidentally) put it straight into the shredder!" She laughs upon reflection.

Needless to say, the paper was salvaged and the customer received his order.

As a one-woman show, Volpov packaged the tires, did all the paperwork, dropped it off at the shipper and took care of everything in between.

She realized it was a lot to take on for one person - she recalls stress and sleepless nights - so she enlisted the assistance of one of the store managers and built it up to a few team members.

Since then, they have been working together, but business hasn't been as smooth as a racing slick tire.

"We had to learn everything from scratch. Nobody had an expertise especially, in our industry."

Opposition from tire manufacturers was strong, as well.

"The tire manufacturers, they weren't supportive of it because we were basically intruding on the territory of their physical stores." But she persevered. Quitting is not in her nature.

"There were days when I thought we wouldn't make it. There just wasn't any support," she recounts, yet the business continued to grow and so did their operation.

What started off in a room above a tire store has now expanded to a warehouse of its own, employees and a full-fledged IT department.

As usual, Volpov has a diversified role when it comes to running the show.

"It's very challenging at times. And I wear many hats. I'm not on the IT side, I'm more on the business development side of things."

As for room for growth, "We are expanding, but we are not expanding as fast. And there's a reason for that. We don't want to blow up! We are doing it slowly and carefully."

And as the Canadian-owned and operated website gains more and more traction (no pun intended), Sofia Volpov is looking forward to the future and the continued growth of a company that started with a simple idea.

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Starting Easter Sunday, for at least 11 days, the Georgia Viaduct will be shut down to traffic for several hours a day to accommodate the filming of a Hollywood action flick starring a homegrown star. The shutdowns will take place between April 5 and 16 to film an action sequence for the movie Deadpool, a spinoff of the popular X-Men series, featuring Vancouver-born actor Ryan Reynolds as the titular superhero.